“Oh, I’m sure you can,” Ramona said, but shook her head. Her eyes were dry, but swollen with emotions all the same. Hurt and anger and so many things that made Dylan want to wrap her up in her arms.
But she couldn’t.
Ramona wouldn’t let her.
“Let’s just talk, please,” Dylan said again.
Ramona took a step back. The set was quiet, all eyes on them, but Dylan didn’t even care right now. She didn’t care about anything but erasing that look in Ramona’s eyes.
“The thing is,” Ramona said, lifting her arms and then letting them slap back at her side, “I haven’t been honest with you either.”
Dylan felt her heart stutter. “What do you mean?”
Ramona eyes finally filled then, but she kept them on Dylan. “We’re wrong, Dylan. We just hurt each other.”
“Don’t say that,” Dylan said, stepping closer to her. “Look, yes, Rayna and Laurel wanted me to date you, butIwanted to date you too. For me, foryou, for—”
“I want to be a costume designer.”
Dylan closed her mouth, let the words sink in. They didn’t seem barbed—seemed like a basic fact about Ramona that Dylan should know. A fact shedidknow. But then the meaning settled over her—costume.
Not just apparel.
“So you…” Dylan said, blinking, trying to make it make sense. “You want to…”
“Work in costume design,” Ramona said, folding her arms. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. A tear escaped and she swiped it away, but her gaze was still steel and glass. “Like this. Like Noelle Yang. I’ve always wanted that.”
And then it all came together.
Click.
The pieces sliding into place.
Ramona and Noelle. Noelle, whom Ramona had met through Dylan, and how nervous Ramona always seemed around the designer. The assistantship. Who knew what else—Dylan certainly didn’t. She didn’t know this woman standing in front of her at all. Hadn’t asked so much, because she was scared of the answers, and she had a right to be. But unlike Jocelyn, Dylan had hurt Ramona too…and that just made it all worse.
Ramona was right.
They hurt each other. Lied to each other, didn’t trust each other. And they both had good reason. Dylan knew she shouldered just as much of the blame for this moment as Ramona, but right now, a numbness spread through her limbs, radiating out from her heart. She felt it happening, when fight or flight shut down, and she simply turned off.
“Dylan,” Ramona said. Not softly. Not gently. Just her name. Utilitarian and emotionless.
But there was nothing else to say, was there?
So Dylan hiked up the dress that Ramona herself had no doubt prepared for this scene—this breakup scene where everything came out between Eloise and Mallory and everything went to hell—and walked away.
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
Ramona woke upstill exhausted.
She’d barely slept. After getting home close to midnight, she hadn’t even had the energy to change clothes, much less cry about what had happened on set. She’d passed out fully clothed, but kept waking up with a start, each time thinking the entire fight with Dylan had been a dream, only to feel a pit open in her gut when she realized it wasn’t.
This happened at least three times. By the time she finally dragged herself out of bed around seven, she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. She’d never been so happy for a day off in her life, for multiple reasons. She couldn’t bear to face Dylan right now, anger and hurt swirling through her in a sick amalgamation. Then there was Noelle’s job offer, her dream come true, but she couldn’t get her brain around it, couldn’t seem to shove Dylan out of the way long enough to behappy, and that just caused her anger and hurt to surge even more.
She needed coffee. Needed something to fill her up instead of all these fucking feelings.
Downstairs, she found Olive standing by the coffee maker, the brew already burbling, and looking down at her phone.
